the War of Three Lifetimes
by Jacob R. Dring
Summary: A narrative take on the AvP2 movie, which also takes a harder look at the two warring sides. The title refers to the three 'sides' to the war..Would greatly appreciate reviews to keep me going. Thanks for reading regardless.
1. No Regulations

**No Regulations**

The voracious Xenomorph screeched with a fury that burned like her acidic blood, invoking fear in the minds and nerves of her impending prey, who shudder with the realization of their own inevitable death. But this adversary stood resolutely, intrepid and steadfastly undaunted. Feet planted firmly in the ground, posture stable and headstrong, the Warrior braced himself for whatever combat would ensue.

They faced with fierce eyes, not twenty yards apart. So distant and yet so near, each feeling as if they could taste the other's atmosphere. And perhaps they could, considering their individualistic stenches permeating the air.

The Xenomorph, unquestionably the more feral of the two creatures, hissed with an enflamed ferocity, her intent lethal not only out of rapacity but of sheer hunger. Ropy strands and globules of opaque saliva sprayed from her gritted line of metallic fangs, dripping from her blunt chin and pooling at the feet. The black talons of her four limbs, curved like scythes, scraped the loam of the ground on which she stood during the clenching of bestial fists. Like a bull preparing to charge, she lowered her arched cylindrical cranium and snorted, visible breath billowing from her nostrils despite the torrid climate. The fearsome creature hissed again, and again and again, presenting its aggression in its guttural vocals due to the lack of eyes in its skull.

Meanwhile, her opponent—the gallant Warrior—stood stagnant and stoic, showing its own reserved belligerence in the flaring of its acute ruby eyes. Beneath the protective mask he wore, the Warrior's hideous face squirmed with anticipation of commencing the fight. A battle with no rules or regulations, no audience to witness the victorious nor the defeated, nobody but the two combatants doing the deed for no-one other than themselves.

And the fate of their species.

The fate of this world.

The ignition of the duel was with whomever made the first move. The Warrior's veteran intellect told himself that, out of eagerness and impatience, the Xenomorph would strike first—or make such an attempt. And out of that the Warrior would perform his counterattack, only to succeed in his opponent's unbeknownst failure.

The Warrior's confidence was high, so elevated that his morale was nothing short of arrogant. And despite his species' notoriety for honoring the fight and the victory—or even the defeat—this particular aggressor saw nobody but himself in the end of this one.

Nonetheless, the Warrior did in fact have his doubts of the outcome.

In his lifetime, many of his comrades have triumphed over their opponent only to come out with a severed limb or a slashed eye. It was this, the consequent compensation for a deleterious battle, which his kind honored so much.

The risk in it all, and what it meant to win.

The Xenomorph, on the other hand, had had her own fair share of battles. Most of them were with her own species, though, bickering over a piece of appealing flesh or having a dispute about something commonly regarded as ridiculous. But in the end she has triumphed, and she wasn't about to let this one Warrior eliminate her from his list of rivals.

Besides, she was hungry.

The Warrior's experienced intellect was affirmed as the Xenomorph made her move. She slung her whip of a barbed tail forward, snapping the air and drawing up chunks of dirt on its path of swift withdrawal. For Xenomorphs it was like the spark for the ignition, detonating the mute confrontation into a full-fledge duel.

The Xenomorph took her chance to hit the Warrior first, leaping airborne as she retracted her tail, protracting lean arms and gaping her small but powerful maw.

Without his rather unfair Plasma Caster, a shoulder-mounted cannon which automatically targets enemies for termination, the Warrior is left with nothing but his brute strength, combat tactics, and melee weaponry. So, crouching to a three-point stance and bracing himself for impact, the Warrior glared up at his incoming adversary.

Their clash was tremendous, the Xenomorph's weight bearing down on the Warrior in an instant, knocking him supine and commencing a struggle of tooth-and-claw. The Warrior, rolling pendulously on his back but unable to neither flip nor overturn the Xenomorph, immediately brought up his right forearm to keep a safe distance between his face and the jaws of his opponent. Jaws consistently snapping, saliva rolling down her maw and onto the Warrior's helmeted visage, the Xenomorph was close but not close enough to deliver the finishing blow. And this struggle could last forever, though if it ended imminently it wouldn't be to her favor, seeing how her first strike had already failed—she hadn't gone fast enough, hadn't made a move directly for the Warrior's head in time.

Now she saw only negativity for herself, so she began to withdraw when an idea popped into her merciless mind.

The Warrior, on the bottom of this typical struggle, realized his underestimation in the Xenomorph's ability to fight back. Noticing the lengthy tail lasso itself in preparation for the strangling—if not the kill—the Warrior acted quickly against the Xenomorph's own coup. He drove his left clenched fist square into the Xenomorph's right temple, knocking the creature off himself and causing it to roll aside, shaking its head in reorientation.

Scampering to his feet, the Warrior got in his own three-point stance just as the Xenomorph hopped up to hers. They glared at one another for a couple seconds before acting, the Warrior first this time.

He shot his left arm to his back, where a Ripper Disc was holstered, seizing it with all five clawed fingers. Withdrawing it in another instant, the Warrior—with a powerful flick of his wrist—hurled the circular metallic disc forward. It spun as it sliced through air with a great whirring sound, making a wide arc to the Warrior's right before veering into the Xenomorph. It struck the creature after a swift second's airborne time, walloping it at a lethal angle with astonishing velocity. The rotary Disc's smooth edge easily sliced through the Xenomorph's left shoulder, tearing off a large chunk of her scapula as she attempted an evasion.

Evidently not working, the evasion itself was severely crippled when the creature began flailing in agonal fury from its wound. Simultaneously, the Ripper Disc boomeranged back to the Warrior, who took it in a metallic clap to his left palm, returning it to its astern holster. Meanwhile, acidic blood the color of lime and the substance of slime gushed from the Xenomorph's shoulder wound. The gash was long and wide, spurting incessantly these geysers of blood and remnants of the creature's hide into the air.

Standing at a safe distance as these globules of blood ate through the earth on which the two combatants stood, the Warrior watched with a confident gleam of pre-victory in his eyes.

The Xenomorph, on the other hand, struggled to cope with this injury as she continued to thrash herself about and wriggle in pain. But the blood flow ceased after a moment, now only oozing gradually, leaving her to a critical limp on her left forelimb.

The leer they shared was only a brief interjection of their ensuing battle, the Warrior no longer wishing to further ado his triumph.

He leapt for the Xenomorph, roaring arrogantly and hearing the echo reverberate in the confines of his mask. One leg bent and the other arrowed, one arm crooked and the other protracted, the Warrior ejected two serrated blades from his wristband, making a metallic _shing_ as they jutted forth. The Xenomorph, left with a severe lack of agility, was forced to take on the pouncing Warrior with whatever strength remained in her.

The Warrior came down upon the Xenomorph with all his force, driving the two wrist-blades into the creature's chest. The jaggedly sharp metal easily pierced the creature's rugged hide, puncturing tissue and flesh and drawing masses of blood. The actual force of the Warrior's body-weight came instantly second, tackling the Xenomorph and propelling her backwards. But with the wrist-blades still, for the time being, hooked into the creature's chest, the Xenomorph brought the Warrior with her in a tumbling roll. They decelerated the further they went, seeming how the Warrior fought his hardest to withdraw from the Xenomorph. But he had once more underestimated the feral creature, since its bodily agility was no more didn't mean the efficacy of its nimble limbs were too. Thus entangled in the lanky arms and legs of the Xenomorph, the Warrior already begun to feel the acidity of her blood abrading his wrist-blades and gradually climbing up to his arm.

Their awkward tumbling finally slowed as their roll on a planar terrain struck an ascending hillside, driving the wind out of the Xenomorph just as her tail seized hold of the Warrior's throat. Barbed skin effortlessly sliced through the Warrior's only unprotected portion of his entire body, the tail tightening briefly before the Xenomorph lost her own conscience from the impact which halted their roll.

The Warrior was left coughing for air as he withdrew his right arm, slinging acidic blood into the air and watching as it eroded both wrist-blades, staggering backwards on sore legs before collapsing supine. He struggled against his impending death, hoping that he had at least killed his opponent even in the wake of his own demise.

Still detecting life—although only a faint beacon of it—in the Xenomorph's body heat through his visual infrared, the Warrior resolved to his last resort. He flipped up the panel of his other wristband, trembling fingers jabbing a keypad that would activate a self-destruct detonation…

But he was too far in.

Even the slightest of strength from such an underestimated foe had brought him to his departure from this world—a world he still did not quite comprehend, and now never would—thence forced to face the possibility of his rival living beyond this point.

Of him, _losing_. He has been defeated.

The remainder of life in him was choked from his lungs, from his gashed jugular, before his clawed fingertips could punch-in the final code.

And there he gazed skyward, his body going stiff then limp, yet another loss in this war.


	2. We Were Here First

**We Were Here First**

"Bobby!"

"No, God, no…_no_!"

"Bobby, I'm coming—"

Bobby's guttural cry for help was more a splatter of salivated blood than actual speech, as the merciless creature decapitated him with the chomp of its jaws.

Meanwhile, Ricky stood about twenty feet away, leaning out the window frame of his brother's bedroom and seeing the creature do the deed in the backyard tree. It was perched on a bough like a gargoyle, an infernal creature of nothing less than depraved intent, grinning without eyes and yet glaring down Ricky with its blood-glistening fangs of a grin.

Tears swelled up in Ricky's eyes, streaming down his cheeks in rivers of stinging brininess. He tasted them on his tattered lips, before they trickled off the cliff of his chin.

"Bobby…" he groaned, feeling his stomach turn rightside up after what seemed like an hour of struggling. The butterflies in his belly joined to create one massive individual, fluttering around and causing him to regurgitate right before the creature. Vomit spilt over the edge of the window sill, falling to the ground twelve feet below.

The creature still glared at him, nonetheless, inert on its tree branch save the heaving of its chest with each gentle but avid breath. It looked like a satanic gargoyle, alright, perched up there with barbed tail curled around the bough and jagged shoulder blades jutting up like its lank knees. And the cylindrical skull which curved around from its snout to its back was just as horrid as ever, a hellish embodiment from a child's worst nightmare. Moreover was its skin, its glimmering onyx hide blending with the murk of the early morning; the full whiteness of the moon casted the only light of the night, giving each overhead cloud a silver glint.

The milieu would've been called beautiful at one time, but not anymore.

And especially not with this demon of a beast perched up on Ricky's backyard tree, remnants of his brother's entrails still dangling from its maw.

"I'm gonna kill you," he began saying, talking to himself. No, talking to _it_.

Ricky's brow furrowed and he gritted his teeth, eyes staring back at the creature. He raised his voice this time, growling it in the wake of his ensuing precarious actions, swearing to himself to avenge his mother, father, and brother's death if it be the last thing he ever did.

And it would be, he told himself. It would be.

"I'm going to _kill_ you, you goddamned bastard! I'm gonna—"

It screeched back, its response coming much earlier than Ricky would've rather liked.

He actually came to adore this moment to himself, screaming promises that he acknowledged were impossible to keep, only in his deepest dreams—dreams mixed with nightmares, not the dreams of rejoining with his family.

Ricky was seventeen, on the verge of being eighteen in three weeks. But now he doubted his much-awaited coming-of-age, doubted it more than anything he's ever been dubious about before. And yet his sorrow for his brother Robert, just barely able to reach seventeen, and his forty-some mother and father now lying in pieces about the house was more severe than any of his incredulity.

"Come and get me," Ricky growled, reaching for the measly BB-gun propped against Bobby's wall by the window. He's lost it, now, but he didn't care. "Come and get me you filthy, sordid piece of _scum_—"

The creature shrieked yet again, its tone earsplitting, turning on the branch and leaping for the window. It soared through the air, closing the gap between the tree and the house's windowed façade in less than a second. Ricky cursed under his breath and screamed in panicky fear at the same time as he staggered backwards, watching the creature land hard against the side of the house. The impact seemed to have shook the house on its foundations, Ricky feeling tremors shoot up his legs, but he told himself that was just in his head—there was no way that monster could weigh so much.

It had landed rather awkwardly, yet, its hind legs propped with rear claws hooked into the wooden panels of the house's façade while its forelimbs gripped the sides of the window frame. It protruded its head through the open window and into the room, its nostrils flaring with the fresh scent of another foreign area. Writhing, black, saliva-slick lips peeled away from metallic-like glistening fangs clamped together, a bestial hiss springing forth from such jaws.

Ricky had nearly stumbled onto his back, but having managed to maintain his footing, he shouldered the airgun and cocked its black hardwood lever.

The Avanti Champion 499 had the recoil of a Nerf watergun, but the .177-caliber zinc-plated lead BB delivered more potency than a stream of H20. With .70 lb-ft of muzzle energy, the propelled BB Ricky shot with the pull of a trigger was enough to chip off a square of the creature's hide. It did nothing more than further infuriate it, however, as the morsel of its skin trivially fell from its body and to the wooden floorboards of Bobby's bedroom.

Ricky watched in horror as the abominable creature literally clawed _through_ the exterior wall of the house in order to enter the bedroom. The sound of tearing wood and plaster filled his ears, as did the thing's own snarling and hissing.

He cocked the airgun again, took quick but concentrated aim, and peered down the steel barrel to the muzzle's hooded front sight.

"Just…go away," he whimpered, despite his sturdily firm stance and aim. He squeezed the trigger.

The BB struck the creature square in its snout. The small lead ball entered one nostril and became lodged nastily within its sinuses. A thick string of blood and phlegm burst from its nasal opening and the creature bucked its head back, jaws gaping. It released a guttural screech that, in truth, was more of ire than pain.

"We were here first, dammit," Ricky muttered, cocking the Champion's lever and squeezing off another shot. This one struck the creature in what would be its forehead, peeling off a thin superficial layer of its hide, but otherwise doing nothing more than aggravating it. Ricky subsequently cocked again and shot again. This one ricocheted off one of its protruding 

shoulder blades, harmlessly lodging into a nigh wall. After that Ricky was cocking and firing every other second, his aim vacillating in accuracy but never acquiring any efficacy as the nostril-shot had seemed to be.

Suddenly a gunshot sounded, a crackling boom distinctive to a shotgun, followed by the din of wood splitting and giving way.

Ricky, frightened beyond all means, didn't know what to say—what to do, that being, how to react. His blood was rushing at ridiculous speeds and he felt nauseous. If he had taken the time to check his pulse, he would've been astonished at its rapidity.

Upon hearing the faint sound of footfalls approaching, though difficult it was to detect over his heavy breathing and the creature's own noises, Ricky opened his mouth to say something—anything—in case it was another person.

In case it were any form of _help_.

But he was immediately interrupted, by the creature having finally managed to rip its way through the window. Ricky's full gaze shifted back to the creature, which was now sprawling to its feet across a blanket of debris spread across the floor.

Ricky bolted.

He exited Bobby's bedroom and veered left once through the open threshold, right hand finding one of the posts belonging to the staircase leading to the first and bottommost floor. Holding the three-pound Champion in his left hand, he felt himself almost lose balance as he hastily trotted down the semi-carpeted steps. Behind him he could only hear the pursuing monster, crashing through endtables in the hallway and driving its shoulder through the corners of a wall, whilst its heavy clawed feet kicked up patches in the floorboards. It growled and snapped its jaws at the air, hissing and spitting globules of its translucent saliva in its prey's general direction.

"Terry!" came a shouting masculine voice. "Terry!? Janet!? Somebody!?"

Realizing the man was calling out for his slain parents, Ricky figured he was a neighbor coming to the rescue—a belated rescue, but nonetheless for help.

"I'm coming down!" Ricky bawled as he reached the base of the stairs, just in front of the blown-in front door.

"I'll be right there!"

"Hurry!" Ricky shouted back, turning on his heels to see the massive creature—at least seven feet tall and eight to nine long with its long, unfurled tail—round the corner on the second floor to reach the crest of the staircase.

Ricky heard the man's footfalls near him but shouldered and cocked the Avanti Champion regardless for at least one final shot. At 240 feet-per-second, the BB propelled through the air and landed just between the chops of the creature. It entered its maw and lodged somewhere in its throat, causing it to hack agitatedly midway through its stairwell descent.

Knowing that it couldn't be anything serious, Ricky tucked down and prepared to bolt out the door. His sock-padded feet wouldn't be sufficient enough to withstand the mantle of splinters laying on the ground between him and the threshold, but he didn't really care at the moment. Bleeding feet would be better than a bleeding _body_.

En route to take his first leaping step towards the door, however, a man emerged from the shadows behind him adjacent the staircase and slung Ricky into his arms. He did this simultaneous to his exit through the front door, or what was left of it, his booted soles crunching splinters beneath him as he took Ricky and himself outside the house and into the night.

The man, once his feet began scuffing the grassy turf of the abode's front yard, immediately let go of Ricky. The seventeen-year-old nearly lost his own footing, but keeping it he spun around to face his rescuer.

'Rescuer' may sound a little superfluous, Ricky briefly thought to himself, but it seemed only righteous.

"Thanks, mister," Ricky said to the man, who towered over him by a good few inches and at least a hundred pounds of blended muscle and fat. He sounded like a little kid saying it like that, but aside from the permitted BB gun shared between he and his brother, Ricky was raised in an incredibly courteous and refined family.

Yet here was this man who stood before him, wearing denim coveralls and a red flannel shirt, his trucker cap tattered and tilted high up on his forehead to expose a receding hairline. His slightly round face was blackened around the cheeks due to the gunpowder he'd been blasting for the past half hour not to mention the rest of the hell he's endured.

"There ain't a problem to it, boy," the man said. "How old is ya?"

"Seventeen."

"My name is Gerard Witherspoon. I'm a friend and distant neighbor of yer parents. They around?"

The screeching and huffing of the creature still rampaging in the house returned, this time far closer.

Gerard turned around and stepped in front of Ricky, Winchester 1200 held port-arms, legs spread, head bowed and eyes glaring at what was to come. And even as the foreign creature exploded from the front doorway, its bony shoulder blades lowered to break through the jambs of the threshold, Gerard held his defensive ground and brought the butt of the shotgun to his shoulder. He cocked the sliding stock and aimed.

The black-skinned beast galloped off the stoop of the house and once its clawed feet struck the lawn Gerard popped off a shot. The shotgun's recoil bucked against his unpadded shoulder, but he'd lock since been used to it. What he wasn't used to, however, was seeing such an abominable fiend charge him and suddenly be missing its right shoulder. The protruding bone 

and topmost section of its lanky right arm ruptured into a blast of slimy gore, which splattered the lawn in a sizzling spray of acidity. The creature roared out in pain and began tilting to its rightside, unable to fully maintain control as it charged its targets.

Gerard felt the seventeen-year-old grip his coveralls as he peered around his body, watching in awe the injured creature still come at them.

Gerard pumped the stock, spitting the empty 12gauge shell out the chamber in a stream of gunsmoke and readily loading another. He didn't wait much longer for this one, as the creature had much enclosed the gap between the house and where they stood on the front yard.

This next shot took the creature's howling skull clean off with a single buckshot round, at less than six meters' distance. Blood, brains, and cranial matter showered the grass as the lifeless creature plummeted headlong into the turf. Its abrupt landing dug up pieces of the earth as it skidded to a halt not two yards from Gerard's feet. Fortunately, its acidic blood hadn't touched any of either Gerard or Ricky, just the grass, which it seeped into and sputtered like bacon on a hot skillet.

As the hissing of the acidic gore settled and the creature was confirmed dead, Gerard turned around and squatted to look into the eyes of the kid he'd just saved.

"Like I was saying," he said, his voice hoarse but somehow calm, "my name's Gerard. I'm a friend of your parents, and I live a few houses down. They're really the only ones who ever treated me like another human being, despite my, uh, lack of standards…so I came here first, when all this hell began to break loose. You ain't a lil' boy, I understand that. You're better than lucky that you survived this long, and by yourself I presume…but I'll ask regardless—are yer parents inside?"

Ricky, having taken all that in rather moderately, now had the time to respond to a question he'd prefer not to. So, simply, he nodded at Gerard's inquiry.

"And…are they alright?"

Ricky shook his head.

His parents, he knew for a fact, were indeed still in the house. His father was in the upstairs bathroom and hallway; his mother was downstairs in the kitchen and wreckroom. Ricky was fortunate enough having not had to witness his mother's slaughtering, but his ears had heeded every gruesome shredding sound which still resounded in his temples. His dad, on the other hand, he had seen torn to pieces before him as he had his brother.

And yet Ricky himself remained alive, breathing and living, yet somehow dying.

In the distance, the near distance, something horrible howled into the night sky. It echoed and rang out until another one joined it. Agonal screams and wails of humans reverberated in the background as the fiendish screeches persisted.

"We oughtta get on the move, Bobby," Gerard said, patting Ricky on the back and turning to leave.

Ricky grunted audibly. He caught Gerard's attention, who slowly turned to apologize.

"I'm sorry…Ricky…" he said sluggishly. "Your parents loved y'all both so much, they didn't ever not talk about y'all. I guess I assumed wrong, and pardon me on that. Is…is your brother—"

Ricky shook his head fiercely.

"My apologies," Gerard said. He eyed the Champion 499 the seventeen-year-old Ricky still held in his hand. He added with a forced smirk, "I bet that's proved useful to ya, huh?"

Ricky simply shrugged.

"Well, it oughtta in the future…my Winchester, well, I only got a few shells left and I'd rather not go back home. Them damned things probably have since overrun half these suburbs by now—all the more reason to get a move on. _Now_, if ya don't mind, Ricky."

"Where to?" Ricky asked, tentative to respond. But upon hearing the continual screams and bestial roars hanging in the air he decided it best to start moving. What prompted his own inquisitions was his sheer curiosity and puzzlement.

"There's a guns-'n'-ammo shop a couple blocks away I typically frequent," he said, pointing with his shotgun to the beat-up F-250 sitting alongside the curb near the house's mailbox. "We'll use my truck. It'll do better than taking one of yer parents' Beamers just for the sake of endurance."

"O-okay…" Ricky stammered as he followed Gerard to the silver-turned-gray pickup. Seeing a wide spatter of yellowish slime—blood—across the hood of the truck, Ricky asked, "Will I be able to get a gun, too?"

"What, better than yer Avanti?" Gerard joked, forcing yet another mirthful countenance. He climbed into the Ford and slammed the door behind him, keys already in the ignition and cranking it to start. As he ignited the V8 under the hood and got the F-250 to rumble to an idle, Ricky shut his door and clicked his seatbelt. He activated the manual toggle safety on the airgun and set it with barrel-up between his legs.

"I'm not a ten-year-old, _Gerard_," Ricky suddenly snapped. "You said it yourself, I ain't a little boy. A couple more weeks and I'd be eighteen. I can handle a gun, okay? I've shot my granddad's Remington a few times, too. Big gun. Out at the range. Kicks real bad, but I could handle it."

"And I don't doubt that," Gerard said incredulously. He put his foot to the accelerator and got the truck moving down the road, dodging abandoned stagnant cars in the middle of the street and trying to avoid running over corpses as well. "But so far as safety goes—"

"Look, I'm not asking for a bazooka or fifty-cal, okay?" Ricky said blatantly. "Just…something that can actually _do_ anything, really."

Gerard hadn't realized how much credit Ricky deserved until right about now. The kid, and kid he may still be if not young man, had endured all of this and still he hadn't broken down. True, the tears were still evident having dried on his cheeks but nothing more than that.

"We'll get you something, Ricky," Gerard promised, taking a left on Battle Creek Road to see something that made both their eyes fly open and their jaws drop.


	3. Rather Unwelcome

**Rather Unwelcome**

He'd never seen anything like it before in his life. Or in his nightmares, for that matter.

"Go back to the hell you came from, ya sons of bitches!" he shouted, his raspy voice echoing in the confines of his home. He cocked his shotgun, hipped it for the nth time, and fired off a round that obliterated the overturned coffee table in a spray of splinters.

Russ Pollack caught something scurry past him on his right, out the corner of his eye, but going the speed it went he was unable to discern it nonetheless. All he knew was that it was a foul crossover of a spider and a crab, scampering around his house so rapidly that it seemed like there were more than one of them.

_Oh Christ,_ he thought to himself in fear, _what if there _are_ more than one!?_

He gaped his jaws and moved his feet, keeping himself mobile, bellowing something unintelligible as he pumped the shotgun and squeezed off another round. This buckshot shell exploded into the couch, sending a cloud of feathery cotton into the air. Russ pumped again, shot again, and missed again.

"Where the hell are you!?" he bawled, tears of terror coursing down his cheeks. "Show yourself, ya goddamn _coward_!"

The small house was a single-level abode with no basement and a crawlspace of an attic. It was fairly secluded from other more urbanized neighborhoods, along the countryside of the town for Russ's own sake of privacy. But now nobody answered his screams, and he was all alone as he'd formerly desired—and now feared.

Nothing more than the dim light of the only remaining lamp in a nearby corner illuminated the center room of the house in which Russ panicked, a supplement to the natural moonlight which shone through the few windows on the house's frontal façade.

"Come and face yer reckoning, ya hear me!?"

Suddenly, from behind Russ, something screeched. Or shrieked, screamed. He couldn't quite identify the sound, but it was close enough to a strident vocalization that it scared the shit 

out of him. Startled, he jumped back, turned on his heel, raised the Remington, pumped and pulled the trigger.

What had momentarily been airborne—all eight crablike legs spread, an uncoiled serpentine tail trailing it, and a bizarre sucking apparatus on its facing underbelly—now rolled down the walls, dripped from the ceiling, and oozed over the carpet in a mess of yellowish slime.

"What the fu…" Russ started, incredulous as to what he'd just seen, let alone done.

Unconsciously, he cocked the Remington 870 and defensively held it port-arms.

Something soared through the air at him from his rightside. He turned instantly, hipping the shotgun, and pulled the trigger. The entire capful of the 12gauge shell's buckshot blew a hole in the thin plaster wall of the house's left façade, taking with it half of a closed square window. The shrill sound of glass shattering induced another sound—a foreign sound—from outside Russ's home. He didn't pay much mind to it, however, as he struggled with another of those eight-legged creatures trying to embrace his own face.

He'd missed the little bugger, but still held the shotgun in both arms—fending it off with the weapon held sideways across his neck. The creature's unfurled tail had hooked around Russ's nape, but was unable to fully lasso his neck with the shotgun below his chin. Russ knew that he was half choking himself, but thought it better than kissing the head-sized creature currently trying to suffocate him.

Russ was on his back, his legs thrashing, both arms clutching the Remington in the continuing attempt to keep the creature at bay. It made minute, but audible shrill noises that he was unable to discern from what orifice these sounds were emitted, but that seemed incredibly extraneous at the time.

He began muttering things under his breath—what little breath he had with him—including, chiefly, invectives targeting the creature, but found that it apparently didn't know English. So he took the more direct approach of offense, known in all languages.

Russ hocked a loogie at the 'face' of the creature—the squirming suction cup-like apparatus of its underside, currently trying to smother him. It ceased wriggling against his defense for a brevity, revolted from Russ's action, its 'mouth' spasmodically writhing in disgust.

He was getting closer and closer to throwing it off of himself when his front door burst off its hinges, flying into the room and sliding across the floorboards. Russ, startled, practically lost his grip on the shotgun and thus nearly let the creature regain complete control. Instead, he held strong regardless, only cranking his neck to turn his head left so his gaze settled on the doorway.

And, there in the threshold, stood a humanoid thing unlike any he'd ever seen—or dreamed of—before. The zenith of its inclined forehead, which formed three-fourths of its face, was less than an inch from the upper jamb of the doorway. Its skin was a tan color, but superficially coarse and almost reptilian, small bumps texturing what portions of its hide were revealed—its entire head, its torso clothed merely in wide-holed black mesh, its clawed four-fingered hands, parts of its burly legs, and its talon-tipped humanoid feet. The thing itself appeared wholly muscular, its pectorals and abdominals well defined, though the prior more than the latter, all of which composited the size of the beast in its entirety. And the equipment it outfitted looked familiarly contemporary to that of a U.S. Marine or other foreign armed forces unit, including a utility belt with various pouches and wristbands with shoulder pads more like a football player than a soldier, nevertheless. Then there was the leather loincloth veiling its crotch, kept there via its belt, redefining it as humanoid.

However, what was most prominent to being inhuman was its bizarre, strikingly otherworldly visage. The high forehead was bordered by a spiny ridge which lead to the cascading black dreadlocks half a foot long down to its shoulders, of which may be hair but only if encased in something superficially hard. The spiny ridge ceased just above the small, glaring yellow irises with dot-pupils, glowering at Russ below their bony brows. What was more were the jaws, portioned into four separate yet somehow joined mandibles, two on either side of the face jutting up and an equal other pair protruding obliquely down to form a crisscross over an internal small mouth, lined with diminutive but sharp fangs. Either side of the mandibles expanded 'comfortably' thanks to skinned webbing between them, forming what would be the humanoid beast's cheeks.

But, all in all, Russ simply could not believe what he was seeing.

"Well I'll be damned," he grumbled to himself, having shared enough eye contact with the seven-foot-tall beast not twenty feet away from himself to know that it was, indeed, real. That it would continue standing there, if not approach to kill him, regardless of the Remington 870 in his hands and this other creature trying to stifle him.

So he returned his attention to this thing before him, atop him, doing his best to force it away. And, out of the corner of his eye, the dreadlocked beast tilted its head much like a curious dog would do, and actually began to turn its back.

_What the hell?_ Russ asked himself, knowing that if he lived past this moment that he would be saying that a lot.

"C'mon," he grunted to himself, a new sense of headstrong obstinacy filling him, "c'mon, now, Russ, don't let this lil' bit of hell get you down…you're still in the fight, old man."

Russ Pollack was forty-four, and he still had a lot of fight left in him.

He mustered all the strength he could before curling up his legs and jerking himself to his feet. In doing so, he managed to spring the crablike creature from his face, sending it disoriented and airborne across the room. It hit the wall behind the couch just as he shouldered the Remington and pulled the trigger. His shot wasn't too bad, disintegrating half of the creature with a blast of gore.

What was left of it fell to the ground, inert and presumably lifeless.

He shrugged to himself, a grin creeping across his face. Then he turned to see the dreadlocked beast not in the doorway any longer. Instead, it approached him. Each heavy footfall sent tiny tremors up his legs, giving him shudders of terror. Then he realized its apparent sluggishness—perhaps it was unintentional at the time, or perhaps due to its size and moderate bulkiness the beast may just be slower than him—and, not to mention, its lack of weapons, quickly taking it all to mind.

Russ backpedaled swiftly, pumping the shotgun and squeezing the trigger concurrently.

Only did the shotgun _click_ fruitlessly, signifying an empty chamber and—moreover—an empty tube.

"_Shit_!"

Russ fumbled around for spare shells in his pants pocket, fingers finding only three. He seized them and brought his hand up, accidentally dropping two of them in the fidgety panic which had overcome him.

"Shit, shit, shit," he muttered to himself, saliva rolling down his bottom lip.

He temporarily ignored the two he'd just dropped, which rolled next to his sandaled feet, and hastily slid the one shell into the underlying tubular magazine to the shotgun. He pumped the sliding stock once, shouldered the shotgun and pulled the trigger the instant the beast made a reach for him. The shotgun report sounded more deafening than it ever has been to Russ, as did the result that much more fulfilling.

The beast's left shoulder had a gruesome crater in it from the close-quarters shotgun blast, yet his arm remained attached, though it had gone flaccid and apparently inoperative. Bright green luminescent blood trickled down its limp arm, pooled at its feet, and covered the front half of the Remington. It had even spattered Russ's shirt and neck.

The humanoid creature had also been knocked back from the blow, yet it still stood.

Russ and the thing exchanged eye contact unlike any he'd ever want to experience—it was like looking into the devil's eyes, and allowing them to look through his soul. Not just _into_ his soul, but simply _through_ it as well.

"What in the hell _are_ you?" Russ exclaimed under his breath.

A pause of silence passed as Russ maintained eye contact but tried to bring the shells on the floor closer via his feet.

"What in the hell…_are_ you?"

Russ bolted upright, all nerves going solid and cold as ice. He perspired more in that second than he has ever in his life.

_Did it just…_speak_?_ he asked himself. He swallowed. _My God, it _did_!_

The mandibles, as he'd seen, had moved slightly like lips would to form words, but it was still in a human's voice. No, it was in _Russ's_ voice.

Russ shook his head, his brow suddenly furrowing.

"No," he said, and got to moving.

He dropped to a squat and retrieved both shells; once they were in his right hand, the shotgun in his left, he rolled unto his back and slid across the floorboards with feet pushing him along. He popped both shells into the tubular magazine, eyes on the weapon for concentration. When he looked up, hands gripping the Remington tautly and going to cock it, the beast was standing over him with right hand reaching down for him.

"You're not welcome here," he growled through gritted teeth, jaws clenched.

Afraid that the gore from this range's blast by the shotgun would get in his eyes, Russ didn't squeeze off a shot when the beast's clawed fingers took a handful of his shirt. Instead, whence the creature had halfway lifted him off his feet with such amazing strength, Russ took all his own might to ward it off. He bashed the shotgun's butt against the beast's horizontally stiff arm, actually breaking it off into splinters upon the impact.

_Shit!_

Russ's eyes flew open when he realized not even all of his own strength could keep the thing away from him, despite a still-taut grip on what was left of the shotgun.

He prepared to say something keen, a pun or something like they do in the movies—for the sake of his own isolated sanity—when the humanoid beast launched him through the air with a fling of its single arm. Russ landed rear-first in his La-Z-Boy recliner, sitting comfortably for a nanosecond then lying on his stomach the next, having rolled over whence the chair flipped from his impact.

"I said," he heaved, struggling to get to his feet, feeling something warm run down his nape, "you ain't a bit o' _welcome_ here…this, bein' my place of rest and solitude, really ain't fit for your intrusion—"

The beast was already upon him again, this time backhanding the disoriented Russ and sending him flying resultantly. He landed awkwardly on a small carpeted section of the hardwood floor, making something go _snap_ in his right arm that incited a yelp of pain. He rolled to a halt along the wall leading to the backdoor—through the kitchen—and already tasted blood in a mouth that ached almost as worse as his arm. Of course, he hadn't seen two of his teeth, either, lying on the floor a few feet away in gobbets of salivated blood.

The bipedal beast stood about two meters away, inert and diabolical in disposition.

It glared at the groaning, injured human with its own naturally limited vision—able to discern the sounds he made with anguish in his tone, not to mention the troubled way he moved. It shook itself suddenly, thrashing its head about and along with its dreadlocks, gaping its mandibles and releasing a roar of premature victory.

"Now," Russ grumbled, tattered lips moving to form words that went with whatever his tongue tried to articulate. "You can just ignore the welcome mat at the front door…" Russ had somehow managed to get to his feet and raise the ready shotgun with his only operable left arm, "…'cause you _ain't _welcome, now, ya hear?"

The beast bent its knees, extended its right arm, and bellowed furiously at the human.

It went to charge him, protracting the clawed fingers in hopes of reaching him before it became too late, but it was futile regardless. All Russ had to do was pull the trigger; he needn't hesitate any longer to do such. So he bent his own knees, took a more steady stance, and fired off his second-to-last round.

The 12gauge buckshot blew a messy hole into the rushing beast's stomach, peeling away if not obliterating a large flap of its hide and uncovering the fragile organic contents within. What was left of its pancreas, kidneys, stomach, and small intestines spilled forth in a steamy flow of fetid gore. The beast staggered backwards before collapsing to its knees, a whimpering growl emitting from its mandibles, then dropped facedown in its own viscera.

Russ would've liked to keep adding to the pounds, as he knew it would certainly make himself feel more comfortable after all this hell and, not to mention, relax a little. But his mind still bustled with a billion questions among other mental activity, and he hadn't the time to start jokes.

"Ah, Christ, I gotta call Haley," he said aloud to himself. He shunted basic superstitions and stepped over the corpse of the slain beast, eyes targeting the phone sitting on an endtable near the blown-to-shit couch.

He picked-up the receiver, placed it to his ear, and dialed the according numbers.

It didn't ring.


	4. Brothers In Arms

**Brothers-In-Arms**

"Jesus H. Christ, how many _are_ there!?"

"Enough to kill, now keep firing, goddammit!"

Private E-2 Taylor York has been through a lot of hell in his life, and if it weren't for this he may have been made Private First Class within a week. But he was already breaking down, permitting the fear to take over him, much like his many comrades.

Taylor continued firing, but in short sustained bursts from his rifle. The Colt M16A2 magazine depleted quickly, its thirty-round clip emptying into the fiends circling Taylor and his platoon's convoy. He knelt in the midst of gunsmoke and the legs of his fellow troops, laying the M16A2 across his thigh and ejecting the clip. His skin was crawling with fright and his heart practically leapt out of his throat with every beat. During the act of reloading, he accidentally dropped the replacement magazine on the asphalt thanks to panicky, fidgety fingers.

"York, you better get your ass up and keep firing, now, ya hear me!?"

Taylor's ears were ringing from comrades' gunfire and from his own thudding temples that he could barely discern his CO's voice.

Staff Sergeant Albert Greene was fed-up with Taylor and the others' bullshit. He understood the fear they were experiencing, as he was too, but at least he had it under control. All hell had broken loose and there were hundreds of questions left unanswered, but the Army had their direct orders from the President himself—eliminate all hostiles with extreme prejudice, taking no prisoners, giving no mercy, and reestablishing safety and security among all civilians.

Albert had his own pressing inquiries fueled by his eager curiosity, but he suppressed them for the sake of the mission at hand. Besides, Albert liked nothing more than to slaughter a bunch of monsters that his twelve-year-old daughter sees in her nightmares.

The convoy of Charlie Company was en route to the County Hospital, in hopes of securing the bedded and regroup at the northside of the town to request an airlift. After that Albert only hoped an airstrike would be available, and if not that some heavier reckoning for these sons of bitches. Albert thought the Army was the best damned armed forces unit in the 

nation, but if need be they could call in the USMC or Special Ops if the Air Force wouldn't be permitted to blow to shit the town which had been inexplicably overrun by these things.

Albert was standing upright, his lower body protected from within the M1126 Stryker APC, his upper portion vulnerable and gazing out over the waves of creatures which swiftly encircled them. In his clutches was the Stryker's Browning M2HB .50-caliber BMG turret, pivotal a full 180°. The APC itself moved slowly as to not lose the following soldiers who acted as its external shields—gunning down the hostiles from outside, since its interior was crammed with injured or otherwise inapt-to-fight civilians. All eleven of them were in there, protected by thick armor resistant up to 14.5mm gunfire.

Fortunately their current hostiles were not firing weapons. Instead, they snapped ugly jaws and clawed and swiped spiked tails at the soldiers moving with the Stryker, somehow so much worse than enemy troops shooting guns. In their favor, nonetheless, the troops were managing to keep them at bay—there had to be at least fifty of the creatures, mobilizing to stay with them as the Stryker moved and they moved with it, going down the straightaway of a street and not letting-up their typically futile melee attacks. Only those mindless and panicky enough would step out of formation and be seized by snagging clawed hands or whipping barbed tails.

Albert had the best view of all, and yet the worst. It was difficult to keep his eyes on the sea of black-skinned creatures as they huddled closely and moved like serpents so fluidly, so cunningly, so dreadfully. But, having the most strategic view of them all, he would take advantage of it—however, only in short bursts. The M2HB heavy machinegun spat out fat two inch-long spears of lead—the .50-caliber BMG round—at 600 rounds-per-minute and 3,050 feet-per-second of muzzle velocity making it one of the most powerful automatic weapons in the nation. And the internal air-cooled mechanism made rapid firing all the better, given its already high rate of fire and belt-fed operation. One to two rounds was all it ever took to takedown a single soldier, even if he wore Kevlar. And with these creatures—which were about eight to nine feet long, perhaps more when fully extended snout-to-tail—it took but three or four. And, moreover, with them so crowded together it made the weapon's lack of pinpoint accuracy a _good_ thing.

Yet they were low on ammunition, their last belt already fed into the weapon, halfway spent. This went for most of the soldiers as infantry, too; within the next ten minutes of continuous firing, at the maximum, they will be relying on their backups—pistols and, ultimately, combat knives.

That just wouldn't do, either. And Albert knew this—they _all_ knew this.

"Where the hell are they _comin'_ from, man!?" Private Chester Starks bawled.

"I think you answered your own question, Chester!" one of his comrades barked to him.

"Aw, no, man! It can't be, man! They're _everywhere_!"

"Can it, Starks, before I put one in your back!" Albert snapped, his voice barely audible over the gunfire and animalistic screeches from the creatures. "Now keep firing! These things ain't invincible, ya know!?"

The one-vehicle and presently sixty-man convoy was nearing the intersection of Northwest and Oak Street. To take a right would mean strafing a shopping center/mall, where an abundance of screams were erupting. Going straight, however, would mean continuing down thin suburbs and approach the power plant on the northside of town.

"Turn right at Oak, Belle!" Albert shouted down into the driving cabin of the Stryker. He patted the roof of the APC with his right gloved hand. "Turn right, at Oak Street!"

"Affirmative, Sarge!" Corporal Harry Belle replied from within, squinting his eyes and peering through the rectangular slit which was his glassless windshield. Through the illuminated murk thanks to the Stryker's headlamps, Harry confirmed the street and accelerated slightly. "Turning!"

Albert gritted his teeth, jaws clenching, and jerked back on the firing triggers of the M2HB heavy machinegun. The recoil jolted him with every squeeze he took, spending twelve rounds into the mobilizing mass of creatures as the Stryker slowly veered right onto Oak Street.

"Turning!" Albert roared over the barking of each burst of gunfire from the M2HB. "Move with it, boys! _Move_!"

And so they did.

The throngs of soldiers pulled tighter to the Stryker as it turned onto the two lanes of Oak Street, moving with it but maintaining enough fire to keep the creatures continuously at bay.

Each and every single of Albert's fired rounds from the M2HB seemed to hit a target, tearing away a chunk of its black-skinned flesh or halve it with a couple bullets altogether. Their bizarre acidic blood splattered one-another but seemed to do no damage, whilst it melted away layers of the asphalt they scuttled upon.

The Stryker gained speed around the corner, whatever was necessary to remain mobile as the creatures pursued them. Soldiers did their best to catch up, but some tripped on themselves or lost their footing in the midst of personal terror. It was a small handful of the troops who met their demise this way, four of them who toppled to the street in the attempt to keep-up with the Stryker simultaneous to fending off the hostiles. A small throng of the creatures immediately broke off from the main mass of their ilk to seize the fallen soldiers, separated and momentarily defenseless. A few of the soldiers still in line with the others and maintaining pproximity with the Stryker turned on their heels to see their fallen comrades. Rifles were shoulders, bursts were fire, and in the passing seconds only one or two of the many creatures dropped. Within moments a small but copious horde of the creatures were piling onto the fallen troops, salivated jaws snapping through bone and tearing through flesh. Fountains of blood formed in spurts as the creatures savagely ravaged the soldiers in a frenzy of swimming tails and swiping claws.

One woman, a soldier enrolled for less than two years, screamed at the top of her lungs for the crony who she lost in the frenzy. But the grief had already ravished her, and she couldn't bear continuing onward unless she did something to help her comrade—her friend. She screamed and screamed, then finally broke away from the others and charged the horde of creatures devouring her brothers-in-arms with rifle shouldered. The M16A2 bucked in response to the rapid squeezes of its trigger, putting round after round into the group of monsters' flesh. Their acidic blood splashed the lifeless remains of their meal and sizzled through the tissue and shredded skin in a grotesque sibilation.

The mass of soldiers moving with the Stryker had long since left her and the fallen troops behind, unable to slow or stop to help any of them—as the necessity to remain mobile mounted.

It became very evident that if one becomes inert, they are certain deaths to the monsters.

Private Carrie Hoskins wasn't thinking when she halted not fifteen feet from the site of the frenzy. Her nerves were frozen solid due to the vast fright and disbelief which has since overcome her. All she could do now was stare and gawk in horror at what was before her—a mob of creatures out of this world, beyond her worst nightmares, distant from any terrible imagination. They were so unreal and yet so solidly present she couldn't bring herself to even scream. She didn't know what to do anymore, even with the weapon in her hands.

The gun.

She spotted where spots of asphalt used to be on the road in front of her, where steam climbed through the air.

_Acid for blood?_ she thought in awe.

Then, the realization—

The gun…the blood…

_The sons of bitches _do_ bleed,_ she thought, reloading, yet feet still firmly planted. _Which mean they _can_ die._

Carrie snapped the firing lever and started shooting, or at least she thought she did.

Two, perhaps three rounds were gotten off before one of the creatures tackled her from her right blindspot. It hadn't emerged from the frenzy of fiends in front of her, still somehow consuming her comrades in spite of their numbers, but from elsewhere in the murk of the night. And not from the crowd which pursed the Stryker, as it continued to keep up with it, now fifty yards down Oak Street. Some sixty yards away.

Carrie went to think something but it didn't pass all the way through her mind when the creature's barbed tail slammed into the small of her back. It passed easily through her midsection and exploded through her diaphragm, spitting a skein of blood and innards with it. Within seconds Carrie had been lifted up off her feet, the M16A2 lying on the ground out of her reach, the creature on all fours and glaring up at her via an eyeless visage.

She was unable to move, paralyzed, not even capable of turning her head.

Blood and saliva spilt forth from her mouth, rolling over her bottom lip in a vile cascade. Bile joined the flow as her body convulsed and the creature snarled. It peeled back its oily black salivated lips to reveal leering teeth that appeared metallic and ridiculously sharp.

Carrie forced her eyes shut before the creature gaped its jaws and dived into her forehead.

Albert hadn't a clue who he had lost during the turn onto Oak, and he knew there was no replacing them. Even if they were rookies, even if they were jackasses, in this world he had come to learn everyone was human. Of course, he was a superior specimen, but he never doubted for a second that one of the novices could succeed to his level given time.

Regardless, he was here now and had a route to keep.

There was nothing that could have been done to save, let alone help, those who had fallen behind. It was apparent enough now that if anything—be it an individual or a group, including the Stryker itself—stopped moving, the impious creatures still pursuing them would pounce for the kill. And their success would be certain, Albert figured.

_So we best stay active,_ he thought strategically, _remain on-the-go, and we're good. _

_For now._

"For now," he mumbled aloud to himself, thinking as he peered over the swarm of creatures still keeping close.

There weren't but a few rounds left in the M2HB, and he knew that of all the weapons currently available to them the emplacement would be the most worthwhile. That being said, he would conserve the little remaining ammunition for later—supposing, hoping, that there will _be_ a later.

"Where to, Sarge?"

Albert looked about before identifying the voice as Harry's. He glanced down through the hole in which he stood and gave the rhetorical answer.

"Just keep course, Belle. Just keep course. Maintain speed and keep your eye on the…"

Albert stopped midsentence.

There was a screeching of detestation and fury from the creatures still with them as Albert's eyes adjusted to what he was seeing. His countenance was of sheer incredulity and skepticism, a disbelief that poured a shitload of more fear into him than he would've ever liked.

"Plow forward," Albert said, under his breath and so inaudible it was almost entirely to himself. "Plow the hell on…"

"Sarge, what?" Belle asked, uncertain on his own in what to do.

"Floor it, soldier," Albert barked, clapping his hand on the roof of the Stryker. "Plow forward and don't let up, now, ya hear!?"

"Uh, sir-yes-sir!" Belle replied, and instantly complied in the face of his own hesitation.

"Keep close, men, and start running!" Albert shouted to the others as many screams erupted from the crowd of his own men. "Get behind the Stryker, and don't slow down…don't look back…just _keep up_!"

The majority of the soldiers conformed to their superior's orders but a handful either made a run for it or tripped on themselves trying to jostle through their comrades in accordance to the command. Whichever way, everyone who lost their footing or bolted away were quickly consumed in a swarm of the creatures—those still paying attention to the humans.

Now the bunch of them were staring straight ahead, in the direction of the speeding Stryker, galloping alongside it but paying less fixation to it or its former prey. Instead their concentration resided with what stood about fifty yards down the road, in a troop blocking the road. Their maws gaped to release roaring shrieks of ire that targeted nothing other than their sole enemies who they now neared.

The Stryker moved twice as fast as the black-skinned creatures did, but that wasn't to say that the fiends weren't gaining speed or weren't determined to reach their destination in a clash of hostility.

At thirty-two miles-an-hour, the Stryker not only had the following creatures trailing but also its own troops. The soldiers, most of them anyway, had tucked-in or slung their weapons and focused on running. The springing group tailed the Stryker with all the energy left in them fueling their legs, not minding the fiends still at their sides. In fact, there wasn't much notice to 

them—they were present, but they paid little to no attention to them. The creatures were careering now, ropy strands of their fluidic translucent saliva flying off from their mouths as they panted heavily with the run.

By now no single creature had its gaze on any of the humans.

"Brace yourselves, but don't stop moving!" Albert hollered into the night as the Stryker neared and the soldiers tried to keep close behind it.

Albert held onto the M2HB but did not fire whence the Stryker proximately approached the troop of humanoid beasts standing like a suicidal barricade across the span of the road. He closed his eyes went they hit, dropped his jaw, and screamed.


	5. Clash

**Clash**

Through their especial visual aid particular for the Xenomorph organisms, sighted as fluorescent green figures with a moderately black background, the Warriors easily spotted their opposition about fifty yards down the asphalt path they now stood upon.

Their heightened sense of hearing had told them the creatures weren't far, since the unholy screeches as filled the night. Of course, the Warriors weren't in so much a hurry to crush their rivalry that they would break formation. Instead, they stood reserved and patient. A fury burning in their chest resounded with pride and honor of fighting against these beasts, clashing with them in battle alongside their fellow comrades. If any one Warrior dare falter in the troop they held or broke formation out of impatient avidity, they would be nailed from behind so long as they weren't the first to draw enemy blood.

Premature combat is almost as much a sin as cowardice.

And Karnek wouldn't have such a thing. He was this troop's Chieftain, and he was responsible for any of his Warriors' imprudence. That was his burden, to care for idiocy in his ranks, be there any. For his own sake and theirs, may there be none.

Karnek and his twenty-seven Warriors stood strong, solid. Sternly unyielding they were, as a gentle breeze pressed against their backs southbound the asphalt path. Their fleshy barricade would prove adequate, Brazna had suggested to Karnek. May there be losses, it was sure, but it would be worthwhile to their stoppage of the charging fiends that were their principal opposition.

Then there were these other beings. They stood upright like themselves, with similar appendages save homely, planar visages. They were all considerably small and diminutive, at least in comparison to the Warriors who stood a good seven feet. The bipedal beings appeared all the same, as did so the Warriors, excluding their own scars and markings and bearings upon their armor. They all were dressed the same, some with long hair and some with short, but every which one of them stood a good foot's length or so shorter than the Warriors.

Karnek, since his arrival to this planet in pursuit of the Xenomorphic spore, has witnessed his fair share of mixed combat from the upright aliens. They used firearms which shot projectiles he and his kind has never seen before. They had advanced technology as did the Warriors, but used it in battle whereas the Warriors kept their primal instincts and primitive warfare as a basis to conflict. Yet there have been the multitude of craven specimens whilst others stood their ground and fought aggressively, dying or surviving in the face of terror and oppression.

He groaned to himself in curiosity, should he ever confront one of their kind and fight it face-to-face. One-on-one, that would be a duel to remember.

Or…would it?

Karnek needn't further his cogitations. The Xenomorphs were nearing, as were the bipeds they had once been pursuing. But upon sensing and sighting the Warriors, the Xenomorphs had a new objective. Their stomachs growled in voracity, to shred and taste the though and more worthwhile flesh of the Warriors than these other trivialities.

Karnek's clawed left hand gripped tightly his spear, whose tip had been fitted with a Xenomorph's barbed tail and spiked end. His facemask remained intact, as did the majority of his Warriors', but it was namely his due to the scar which had been slashed across the left eye from a previous encounter. Two Xenomorphs simultaneously, to come out alive and victorious with no injury, some said Karnek had witnessed pure luck. But this was blasphemy, and every Warrior knew it.

There was no such thing as luck to the Warriors. Ever.

"Hold," Karnek roared in their foreign language to his Warriors.

The upright creatures stood steadfastly, feet planted firmly against the macadam ground, hearts beating fast with the eager to fight and kill, and not fear but glory to die in the clash.

The massive, iron-hide vehicle which sped ahead the other bipeds and left the Xenomorphs barely trailing was something of the likes no Warrior has ever seen. It couldn't be from the Xenomorphs—they were brainless creatures to the Warriors, incapable of constructing technology past their own primeval instincts as they were simply unable to form general camaraderies.

The Xenomorph is a coldhearted, bloodthirsty, straight-minded animal alive only to kill and eat to survive and further their cruelty over opposing forces.

They were indeed a force to be reckoned with, but were generally inept when it came to strategy and tactics.

The Warriors, on the other hand…

"Hold!"

Each Warrior stood erect, posture as unyielding and steady as a statue. The only part of them which moved were their chests, heaving with every breath and their mandibles beneath their facemasks which parted with every exhalation.

They had no shields, save those who had since made Xenomorph skulls into makeshift armguards, making them seemingly insufficient to adequately hold their ground against the charging opposition.

As the creatures neared, namely the bipeds' iron-hide automobile, Karnek cursed under his breath to himself.

_What of _this_ monstrous beast?_ he asked himself, in regards to the iron-hide thing.

It moved too fast and was too large to be survived if stricken by it. If anything, the Warriors' whimsical plan had banked on the iron-hide thing to veer in the attempt to miss their troop, their fleshy barrier.

But perhaps the bipeds saw them as a threat, or had no other way around and were determined to continue onward. Perhaps, Karnek thought, they had completely underestimated the brute strength of these bipeds and their machines, of their belligerence and valor.

He cursed again, but held his volume down as to not alarm any of his comrades. He stood vanguard to the whole troop, and he knew if the iron-hide beast struck headlong into their barrier, he'd be the first fatality to many behind him.

When the iron-hide tank of a beast finally clashed with his troop, it did so just following an abrupt steer right. Its frontend plowed over six of his Warriors, crushing them with ease and splattering their green blood across the hood of the vehicle. Its fat, thick, treaded tires rolled over their corpses but had since lost a chunk of its velocity from the collision. A handful of nearby Warriors dove either out of the way or leapt up onto the vehicle to try and overwhelm it. Three Warriors managed to climb aboard it, having to deal with one main hostile in order to comfortably attack the operator.

The dark-skinned biped stood in a sort of metallic embankment integrated into the automobile, gripping one of its massive emplaced firearms. He roared at one of the Warriors, swearing blasphemies as he took the firing triggers and jerked at them, The weapon recoiled in his hands and spat inch-wide slugs at pointblank range. The nearest Warrior's torso erupted in a spray of fluorescent lime gore, splashing the dark green armor of the vehicle with its blood before the corpse slipped off entirely.

Karnek bellowed a warcry as the iron-hide thing continued through their fleshy barricade, plowing over a third of their force going moderate speed. It was the thing's sheer brute strength which defeated the standing Warriors, and the biped's firearms had enough punch to knock any of them down in seconds.

Just as the iron-hide thing rolled over the last couple Warriors in its way, the following bipeds tailed it through the carnage it had wrought so effortlessly. Only then arrived the Xenomorphs at a charging gallop, jaws gaping and shrieks filling the night air already acrid with gunsmoke and Warrior bloodshed.

Meanwhile, one of the remaining Warriors still holding onto the iron-hide tank began thrusting his spear into a small window in the vehicle's roof. In there he had glimpsed, with a switch to his infrared visor, one of the bipeds. His thrusts with strong and swift, but somehow the packed-away biped managed to dodge every jab.

And then the Warrior drew blood.

The serrated spearhead, this one not of a Xenomorph's tail but of Warrior-made metal, slashed at an arm and formed a crimson gash along the length of the being's bicep. It made a loud cry of pain that reverberated in the Warrior's ears and echoed twofold in his visor's noise analyzers.

The vehicle began veering jerkily left and right along the road, decreasing speed but increasing the chance of crashing.

The Warrior raised his spear again, red blood dripping from the metallic tip, and parted his mandibles to emit a vociferous roar of premature victory. He began to thrust it down again, into the window where the driving biped sat bleeding, when his own arm exploded from his torso in a mist of gore. The beast howled in ire and pain, doltishly releasing his grip of the vehicle to clutch at his wound, only to lose all control of his poise and tumbling off the side of the tank.

His body fell to the asphalt and something snapped in his other arm. He cried out his last wail before a throng of the following bipeds with their firearms barraged him with their projectiles. His torso became rippled with them, his blood oozing from the wounds and his life slipping away.

The only other Warrior on the tank had since been killed by the dark-skinned biped who had just annihilated another with its emplaced weapon.

Karnek saw the vehicle out the corner of his eye continue onward down the street, its armor streaked with Warriors' blood, out of reach and out of danger—for now—so long as he knew, so long as he cared.

At present, however, much more was to be dealt with.

All around him clashed Warriors with Xenomorphs, whilst handfuls of the armed bipeds separated from their mass distantly trailing the iron-hide tank to fight the whole of them.

Karnek turned just in time to duck a flogging Xenomorph tail. It sliced the air mere inches above the zenith of his arched forehead, whence it withdrew to the creature it belonged to. Karnek snarled at the hissing beast, eager to take its life in the face of glory only to turn and do upon another, and another, and—

The creature lunged at him, arms protracted and claws reaching for his own flesh. He sidestepped and jabbed at it with his spear, sticking the scitmar of a tip into its segmented abdomen. He withdrew it swiftly, taking with it a strand of the creature's acidic blood. Fortunately for Karnek, his Xenomorph-tail of a spearhead was naturally able to withstand the acidity and thus remained perfectly intact.

"Back into the abyss, you go!" Karnek snarled, spinning on his heel and extending his dual serrated wrist-blades. In one deft movement, Karnek ducked to one knee and swiped the wrist-blades across the disoriented creature's gut. The Xenomorph collapsed in a heap of its own hard-bodied flesh, its entrails spilling forth from the Warrior's disemboweling blow.

Karnek withdrew his hand to see that only the tips of the serrated blades had been eroded off from the creature's acidic fluids.

Something caught him suddenly in his left thigh. It struck him at high velocity, puncturing his flesh and exiting out the other side. His own blood splattered his other leg and the ground upon which he stood. He clicked his mandibles to restrain himself from crying out in agony. Regardless, it was miniscule pain. Overrated. Trivial.

He told himself this, as his blood leaked from the small but prominent wound in his thigh.

Karnek turned to get two more wounds in his gut, these however lodging themselves in the strip of armor blanketing his stomach. He glared at a single biped, standing there about a foot a few inches shorter than he, wielding one of those bizarrely shaped firearms. He approached the frightened creature, which shuddered in terror at the sight of him, until he stopped not a few paces away.

Amid the battle still waging around them, Karnek stared down this petty animal with eyes of undaunted strength and vigor.

He stretched apart his mandibles and roared shrilly.

The two-legged two-armed thing fumbled with its weapon, doing who knows what Karnek was clueless of, as he approached it. Karnek reached the animal only to draw a hand back and wallop it in the face. The blow sent the thing hurling astern, landing on its back and rolling across the pavement. Its weapon flew from its hands and lay aside.

Aimless projectiles whipped past the towering Karnek's head as he stood in a glade of the battle, stagnant. He stooped to retrieve the comparably small firearm the biped had used against him, and scrutinized it with curious eyes. Then he tightened his grasp so much so that the weapon crackled and broke in his hands. He dropped it to his feet and approached the biped. The animal was pleading for its life, that much was certain yet somehow ambiguous to Karnek's interpretation.

Karnek raised his spear, absolutely dwarfing the kneeling biped, and drove it downward.

The spearhead of the Xenomorph's tail went through the biped's chest and out the small of its back. A horizontal geyser of blood spat out either wound, leaving the animal to convulse fatally until its pneuma fled entirely.

Karnek extracted the spear with a jerk of his arm, leaving the corpse of the biped to fall facedown unto the ground.

Meanwhile, Brazna had joined comrade Yooma in the battling of a single adult Xenomorph. The creature was larger than the majority of others, standing half a foot taller than their Chieftain and with limbs longer than any they've ever seen—other than a Queen, of course.

The creature was constantly on the move, however, making it an incredibly difficult target. Regardless, the two Warriors made it impossible for the Xenomorph to escape their circle. Their ring, enclosed around the creature, as if they were vultures just picking at it and having their time with it.

This wasn't entirely the case.

The Xenomorph remained on all fours, body hunched over with haunches' spines protruding up as its legs bent outwardly and head thrown back as naturally as it were. It hissed, salivated lips peeled away from leering jaws of metallic fangs, eyeless black skull glistening in the moonlight. It scurried about in the circle the two Warriors made of it, its feet constantly moving to keep its body mobile and not a sitting duck for any of its attackers to make the killing blow. Surely, its hurtful blood would smolder one of the upright beasts should they kill it themselves, but the creature would rather live through this moment to subsist onward—especially on an empty stomach.

The Warriors barked obscenities at the creature as it circled itself like a frightened dog, but its sheer size and hazardously flailing tail were enough to keep them at bay.

At last, then, Brazna had had enough of this waiting game—this play on what should be a duel. He signaled to Yooma with a wave of his fisted hand and the fellow Warrior ducked into a roll. The Xenomorph turned on him, lashing out with its jaws and bringing its tail around. Brazna lunged at the creature from its turned side, eyes wary of the waving tail but also intent on the creature itself. He ducked to evade the tail but underestimated its path when he went in to thrust his spear at the Xenomorph's side.

The segmented tail slashed a wide gash along the length of Brazna's chest, drawing blood but causing only trivial pause. The Warrior sidestepped to avoid the full momentum of the flinging tail, reversing a couple paces to catch his breath, then charged again—head low, stomach tucked in, legs bent. The pain throbbed in his chest, but the stinging ache was only superficial. He would get by with it, it wasn't fatal or notably severe.

Brazna extended his right arm, of whose hand held securely the staffed spear, and punched its serrated tip into the hide of the unsuspecting Xenomorph. The spearhead punctured the creature's skin and tore through tissue and sinew with ease, entering its underlying soft flesh only to draw the acidic blood to the surface.

The sound of sizzling metal entered Brazna's ears but so had two other unique dins.

One was the yelping shrieks of an injured Xenomorph, this one of which felt the jolt of pain in its side but was able to move regardless of the gradually eroding spear jammed into its flesh. The other, however, caught his attention the most—it was the familiar sound of a Warrior in anguish, howling for help amid the bowels of despair.

Brazna temporarily ignored the latter clamor only so he could rid them of this particularly troublesome Xenomorph. So he put all his might into the lodged spear, pressing it further into the creature's body until more than half of it was inside. A quarter of the spear, the part which had since been almost entirely corroded, was resultantly shoved through to the other side of the creature's abdomen. Now jutting out, it hissed as the acidic blood sweltering through the spear came in contact with the atmosphere.

The Xenomorph threw its head back further, jaws agape, and emitted a full-fledge howl of pain. It began wailing about as it stood there on all fours, the severe ache flooding its nervous system and sending puzzled messages to its brain.

Given the time, Brazna released what was left of the lodged spear and rolled around to find Yooma lying on the ground, wounded. His facemask lay aside, matted with Xenomorph saliva and Warrior blood, a gashed hole obliquely cut down the center. Brazna knelt over his comrade, staring down into what was left of Yooma's pale eyes.

"A pleasure dying at your side," Yooma managed. A spurt of salivated blood spat up from between his mandibles as he couched. His face hurt, stung horribly. The creature's middle talon had sliced through his facemask and into his skin. He could barely see anymore, and despite the life still left in the rest of his body, his lungs were filling with blood.

Breath, he realized, became increasingly sparse for him.

"And a pleasure to live along yours," came Brazna's response.

There was no room in the midst of battle, or even the passing of it, for emotions. Other than perhaps fury, if one cannot restrain himself to maintain reservation and concentration during combat. But grief and sorrow were left for the weak, the pitiable.

And Brazna was no such Warrior.

Regardless, he's fought beside Yooma for years past, and now was the last in their memory of honor.

And, so glorious it was, despite the lamentation.

Brazna watched the life slip from Yooma's eyes as his body went stiff then lax in a matter of seconds. Ire built up until it exploded in his chest, bringing him up to his feet to face the Xenomorph struggling to regain itself behind the Warrior.

A handful of stray projectiles flew past Brazna as he reached to remove his facemask. It was stifling, but above all it concealed his true bestiality from his opponent. What's good about confronting an adversary nose-to-nose if one's face is sheathed behind a veil of metal?

"Was it his time to die?" Brazna snarled as his clawed fingers gripped the facemask to take it off. "And take it upon you to decide?"

Once removed, Brazna dropped the mask to the ground, where it clattered against the blood-tainted tarmac. His mandibles flared in vexed anger.

"I don't _think_ so," he growled under his breath, inhaling and throwing open his arms—protracting both wrist-blades to their hyperextensions. He released one long, combatively antagonistic roar before springing at the Xenomorph.

Brazna struck the creature headlong, swiping a hand at its whilst airborne, cutting two rigid gashes across its slick scalp with the sharp wrist-blades it equipped. The Xenomorph barked and hissed almost concurrently, rearing up and reversing several meters, shaking its head as the pain shot through its central nervous system. Its temples throbbed achingly, but it reoriented itself quickly.

The creature ducked down so its belly practically touched the ground, and thrashed its tail at the Warrior in a swift lash. The barbed tail sliced air before it did flesh, messily severing Brazna's right arm in a spray of blood and sparks. The Warrior's wristband exploded minutely, scolding the portions of his skin that hadn't been removed from his torso as was his arm from the elbow-down. He threw back his head and howled to the moon, his wail of wrath and distress filling the night air.

When Brazna returned his glaring gaze to the Xenomorph, it was on the move again, circling now like a wolf preparing to pounce. When it was ready, so it did. Brazna sidestepped to avoid it, but wasn't quite fast enough. His underestimation could have cost him his life, were it not for comrade Taj'na and his shuriken. The spiky-limbed metallic disc accurately severed the Xenomorph's flailing tail at its base, before returning to the Warrior's hand.

Brazna paid little attention to Taj'na, however, as he worked to kill this beast himself. If anything, he would annihilate Taj'na for taking his kill—if it came to that. Fortunately, Taj'na turned to catch a fleeing human in the back with his shuriken, only to clash with a Xenomorphic opponent of his own.

With the span of a couple seconds' delay from the wounded Xenomorph, Brazna enacted his counterattack. He brought up his knee to the creature's gut, ramming it up against what was left of the spear still lodged into its flesh, managing to hurl the Xenomorph off of him. The creature went airborne, flying backwards in a storm of flailing limbs and gnashing jaws. It screeched all the while, blood still spurting in intermittent bursts from its severed tail and leaking excess amounts from its abdominal wound.

By the time the creature landed, about thirty feet away on its back and thrashing to regain its footing, Brazna was sprinting towards it, wrist-blades fully extended.

The creature gazed up to see the Warrior already upon it, lashing out with the two serrated blades protruding from its wristband. This was the last image the Xenomorph ever saw, before the sharp blades dexterously slashed through its skull. Half of the creature's head came apart, brains and gore spilling out onto the tarmac in a sizzling heap.

Brazna retracted what remained of his eroded wrist-blades to shake his head and roar victoriously. His braided dreadlocks slapped his shoulders as his mandibles spread wide, his bellow reverberating through what had become a pandemoniac battlefield.


End file.
